Tuesday, February 18, 2014

As If You Needed Another Reason to Loathe Saudi Arabia.

From the House of Saud on down there's a lot of rot in Saudi Arabia. Here's a new one - divorce. In Saudi Arabia, it's not necessary for the husband or the wife to sue for divorce. They can actually have it imposed on them.

IN three months, 14 lawsuits have been filed calling for breaking of marriages by relatives who thought the husband and the wife are not socially equal. Some judges and lawyers do believe there are merits to these claims. Many legally married couples were divorced, as an afterthought, because somebody discovered that one or the other was not good enough based on his or her bloodline.

Before these cases reach the courts, pressure is used against both parties to divorce voluntarily. Threats of economic and social boycott is typically used. In some cases, violent acts are committed. If, however, both are resisting and insisting on staying together, then any family or tribe member has the right to take them to court. The judges will then call on the “less equal” party to bring his/her proofs of equality — family trees, tribal historians, documents, witnesses and others. If these evidence were not satisfactory, then it is up to the judge to order the forced separation of husband and wife. Children custody are usually given to the “racially superior” parent.
I'm sorry but that's one morally bereft, hopelessly fucked up country. These assholes are right up there with the Taliban.

5 comments:

Not sure just who the Taliban are these days, exactly, so it's hard to comment on them. But the old school Taliban were way less fucked up than the Saudis. Sure, they were male chauvinist bastards and medieval hardasses who authorized vicious legal punishments for so-called crimes that merited no such thing. But they believed in the rule of law and they weren't corrupt. They weren't like the warlords--they'd stone you to death after they found you guilty of something, but they wouldn't rape you and steal your stuff first.

The Saudi upper echelons manage to be pretty much every kind of evil at once--they do all the vicious stuff characteristic of stone-faced moralistic theocrats, and then turn around and treat the servants as sex slaves while snorting coke at decadent parties. Their laws are horrible, but anyway don't apply to the wealthy and powerful, who do any kind of shit they want and brutalize or kill anyone who complains.

"Saudi Arabia is an important partner for Canada. It has significant regional and global influence, and plays a leadership role among Arab countries on key regional issues, including Syria and Iran," Husny wrote.

"We will continue to engage with Saudi Arabia on a range of issues including regional security and human rights."

Yeah, if we can sell those anti-democratic, oppressive bastards $10-billion in light armoured vehicles that will probably be used only to keep Saudi dissidents subdued or fed into the Syrian maelstrom, that's just dandy and the Saudis are our BFFs.

You can tell if a despot is any goddamned good by whether he buys Canadian gear.